The day’s news is mostly pretty grim, so here is a feel-good story from Independent Journal Review. An IJR reporter spent Tuesday with newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. Washington was mostly shut down on Tuesday after a minor snowfall, but that didn’t stop Secretary Zinke.
Among other things, he helped shovel the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:
Zinke, a former Navy Seal, didn’t find a few inches of snow particularly daunting. Zinke also gave some tourists backstage tours of the Lincoln Memorial. Here he is on the roof of the Memorial with some of his park police officers:
Among other things, the secretary checked out the national mall:
The officer points out a large white tent on the National Mall, telling the secretary that this was an ongoing protest tent, which has been granted a three-year permit. “Who grants such long permits? Who gave them the permit for three years?” asks Zinke, a bit incredulous. The officer tells the secretary that their station did. “That sounds like a lease to me,” Zinke states. “They don’t have a building. It’s the National Mall. You don’t want to have campgrounds set up here for years.”
Zinke toured Robert E. Lee’s house, which has become dilapidated through neglect, and Arlington National Cemetery.
I ask the secretary if, as a veteran, he takes the ill-repair of Arlington National Cemetery personally.
I think it’s a national disgrace that things have been neglected this far. This didn’t happen overnight. That’s why I’m personally going out into the field to look at our battlefields and parks.
Much more at the link. The reporter asked Zinke how he likes living in Washington. Zinke responded:
It’s fine. Where you get in trouble is when D.C. becomes normal. This place is not normal. The people in it, and how it runs, is not normal. You should never lose the perspective of where you come from.
The Zinke profile is a fun piece. It is also a valuable reminder of what an excellent job President Trump is doing, for the most part, in staffing his administration. The difference between people like Ryan Zinke and whoever Hillary Clinton might have nominated is night and day.
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